Local Climate Change

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George the original one
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Local Climate Change

Post by George the original one »

Climate is definitely changing locally, noticeably so in Portland, Oregon. Failing to plan around the change is a mistake, whether you believe it is manmade or not.

For instance, it doesn't snow like it used to. Regular annual snowfall is a thing of the past, with El Nino influencing whether there will be any snow at all, with one winter often accounting for the bulk of the snow in a decade. For the 2000s, the winter of 2008-2009 dropped 24", over half the decade's snowfall. The 2010s have put 5 winters into the books and the decade only has 14" snowfall so far; it will take twice that in the next 5 years to equal the 2000s snowfall.
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Summers are significantly hotter than they used to be. Portland's past was marked with a mild summer climate, with very few hot days where the thermometer got above 90F. So far in the 2010s, 90 days (more than the 1960s!) have been racked up and the climate is on target to hit 150 days. If you want to move to Portland for the climate, be aware that the "Portland summers are mild with an average of 11 days over 90F" is not valid today.
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George the original one
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Re: Local Climate Change

Post by George the original one »

More severe weather linked to climate change? Let's look at tornadoes hitting Oregon by decade:

1950s 4
1960s 12
1970s 9
1980s 9
1990s 31
2000s 30

halfmoon
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Re: Local Climate Change

Post by halfmoon »

@Georgetoo,

Can you tell me how to find these statistics for Seattle? Did they hatch in graph mode, or did you have to turn them into graphs by some sort of magic? For some reason, I normally have extreme difficulty "seeing" graphs, but these were clear to me. I'm really interested to see how the Seattle/Western WA snowfall and summer temperature changes would track.

It was shocking to see the number of 90+ degree days in Portland. I wonder if this correlates at all with potential solar energy production. We have Portland friends who have covered their entire roof with solar panels and ordered a Tesla, and I need to know whether to envy or mock them. :D

steveo73
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Re: Local Climate Change

Post by steveo73 »

Lord help us ! The climate is changing.

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jennypenny
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Re: Local Climate Change

Post by jennypenny »

It's funny how the little things can sometimes reveal a lot. I grew up on a lake. It used to freeze for at least a month or two every winter, long enough to spray paint a hockey rink and secure the nets so we could play after school every day. One year it was frozen for several months ('76-'77). The winter of '80-'81 was the last good year. By the time my youngest brother moved out it almost never froze for more than a couple of days in a row.

This is the lake now. The town is working on a dam hoping it will fill back up with some help.

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Sclass
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Re: Local Climate Change

Post by Sclass »

Aww man this is a bummer when the climate change hits close to home.

The tide pools in South Orange County between Emerald Bay and Newport are dying. I've been playing out there since I was a kid and the dieoff during the last two years is dramatic. Sea anemones gone. Urchins gone. Starfish gone. Snails gone. Clams gone. Crabs gone. Sea slugs gone. Seals are done too. They came up on the beach starving last summer and ended up in a lot of beachfront homes scavenging. No more. No need to call marine rescue, they're gone. Lots of empty shells.

I love when I hear bleach white tourists say "oh honey look at all the perfect shells on the beach, it's wonderful". Yup, big unbroken mollusk shells just started washing up one year. Before it was pure luck to find one that wasn't cracked. Now the beach is a combing paradise. Wonderful!

And the fisherman are gone...unless they're dumb or not there to catch fish.

And we had some new stuff show up. It was ankle deep in red "Tuna Shrimp" for a week. Apparently they came up from Baja and died. People found a few yellow bellied sea snakes which was super rare.

I've been watching this particular stretch of beach long enough to notice he change. It's like somebody dumped toxic waste in there. Oh wait, TEPCO did just that.

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: Local Climate Change

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

The date of ice forming and ice leaving the lakes where I live has been tracked for 150 years. The trend is for a later start date and earlier end date. In 50-100 years it won't freeze at all.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Local Climate Change

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I can't come up with as vivid of an example based on my personal experiences in my region. The weather has always been highly variable in south-east Michigan. It is my perception that the variability has now increased to the level that you can pretty much count on not needing to wear your snow pants in August, but that's about it. The first year I ventured into gardening was 1988, and there were a record number of days over 100 that summer, so that colors my perception somewhat in the other direction, because I am forever expecting all my seedlings to perish due to scorching heat. Unfortunately, it is difficult to point to any sort of obvious pattern with just cursory skim over historical weather data for my region.

My region is also somewhat unique due to the fact that there has been greatly increased population in some areas and greatly decreased population in other areas. So, much of what was countryside in my childhood is now strip-malls, and much of what was once vibrant urban center is now nothing but abandoned rusting or rotting structures, weeds and scrub-trees. Air-conditioning was not yet omni-present in the 1960s/70s, so I can clearly remember being stuck to a vinyl car seat in the glaring heat, driving into the cement jungle of Detroit, while listening to "Summer in the City" by the Lovin' Spoonful playing on the radio.

George the original one
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Re: Local Climate Change

Post by George the original one »

Everyone living in the Portland area today knows that increased elevations will get you more snow. The top of the West Hills never goes without snow while the tops of Mt. Tabor and Kelly Butte are limited to only dustings. To get a consistent 2" or more, you need to be around 1000ft elevation.

2" or more snowfall at the rivers was the case in the 1900s, 1910s, & 1920s. Which means that climate change for Portland has had the same effect as if Portland were lowered by 1000ft over the past century!

Riggerjack
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Re: Local Climate Change

Post by Riggerjack »

@GTOO

Those charts looked so dramatic, I thought they had to be faked. I mean, 40 inches of snow in portland in just one winter? Hipsters would be EATING each other.

Then I realized that they aren't average per year, but total over a decade. That seems like a good way to show the slow changes.

Where did your data come from?

George the original one
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Re: Local Climate Change

Post by George the original one »


George the original one
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Re: Local Climate Change

Post by George the original one »

We just exited La Nina into a neutral condition. That is one of the shortest periods (if not the shortest) spent in La Nina and extremely unusual after the strong El Nino that enhanced heat waves across the USA for the past 2 summers. Forecasts do not yet indicate moving into another El Nino this year, but it is an ugly possibility.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/a ... disc.shtml

IlliniDave
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Re: Local Climate Change

Post by IlliniDave »

I saved off a copy of this because it is of interest to me, and I'll be curious to see how the predictions pan out. Unfortunately I likely won't be around 35 years from now to see if they are right. For the morbidly curious I will be spending the warm season in the little finger of the Northwoods area that sticks out to the NE of the state (north of L Superior). If these guys are right, I should get even more use out of the cabin than I thought! But might have to spring for an A/C unit too. I suspect these predictions are on the more enthusiastic/aggressive side. I do know that the year I bought the place ice stayed on the closest lake for an unusually long time, past Mother's Bay. But in the three springs I've been the owner, the ice has gone off one day earlier each year, all right around tax day. It's unusual for consecutive years to be bunched so close together. A nearby lake has had a "guess the ice out date" competition going back many decades. I once stumbled on the results from it. The dates bounce around from early April to late May. Wish I'd have saved that data.

I thought jacob had an older thread for these localized climate impact discussions, but I couldn't find it.

http://features.weather.com/us-climate- ... minnesota/

Riggerjack
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Re: Local Climate Change

Post by Riggerjack »

@illinidave,
Interesting link. I was amused that it showed TX as having 1 fewer day of allergens. Yup, still not worth it. :twisted:

Have fun our there. Where will you winter?

IlliniDave
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Re: Local Climate Change

Post by IlliniDave »

I intend to enjoy it until I'm too old to do so. I'm on the edge of 2.5M acres of wilderness preserve (combined, US and Canada). My plan is to winter back in the town where I grew up, at least so long as my folks are still around. After that, I'll have to reassess, but I still have a lot of family in that area so likely I'd not stray too far.

ETA: IN the interest of full disclosure, I probably should add that I would probably be considered derogatorily a "climate denier". I would agree with the assertions that the climate is changing and has warmed since the late 1800s, and that human activity is part of the equation, and agree with the "97%" to that point, but I think the "modeling" that led to the predictions of ~5 degree warming in the next 35 years are likely overestimating the change in that period and overestimating the human contribution.

George the original one
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Re: Local Climate Change

Post by George the original one »

Not so local result of Greenland ice sheet melting...
https://www.yahoo.com/news/greenland-no ... 23414.html

black_son_of_gray
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Re: Local Climate Change

Post by black_son_of_gray »

A full moon + heavy rain = flooding in certain neighborhoods in Atlantic City now. (And other cities up the US coasts)

Clip here

Article here

I hadn't though much about how quickly people could get financially boxed in with these situations - I figured the last people to leave would be stuck, but it starts way earlier than I thought. If they lose their job, they are in a really tight spot because they can't sell their house (its underwater and its under water). If the government decides to play with the national flood insurance program (who knows with this President and his Cabinet), then it would be impossible to insure these houses, and impossible to sell them.

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jennypenny
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Re: Local Climate Change

Post by jennypenny »

After Sandy, residents of NJ were offered money but they had to agree not to sell their home for three years. Most took the money but in some communities it looks like it would have been better to just get out. Even after dredging and repair work to bulk heads, some neighborhoods on the back bays still flood during every high tide, and as BSOG pointed out, the full moon/storm combo makes the flooding much worse (the water is still disgusting too, even years later). It shows how a storm can change an area at risk overnight.

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jennypenny
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Re: Local Climate Change

Post by jennypenny »

Natural Disasters by Location: Rich Leave and Poor Get Poorer

"We found that, if a county experienced two natural disasters, migration out of that county increased by one percentage point, with the strongest reactions happening in response to hurricanes."

"Poverty rates also increased by one percentage point in areas hit by super-severe disasters."

IlliniDave
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Re: Local Climate Change

Post by IlliniDave »

The county I live in now has had "super-severe disasters" in 5 of the 8 decades but the population keeps growing. Obviously from the map population is a significant contributor to super-severe disasters (since the measure is the number of deaths). The western third of the US, with the exception of California, has had basically none.

The good news perhaps is that a solar minimum is expected soon, maybe along with a mitigating effect on temperature it wall also have a mitigating effect on some of the stronger weather events.

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